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Focus on Somalia

Recent peace talks in Somalia suggest a glimmer of hope for this struggling East African nation. Somalia has been in turmoil ever since the last true head of state, President Muhammad Siad Barre, was overthrown in 1991. Like so many African countries, Somalia’s problems are sourced in colonialism.

Somalia was first written about in ancient Egyptian texts, where its Punt region was described as “the land of aromatics and incense.” For centuries, Arab and Persian trading posts dotted the country’s coastline. It wasn’t until the arrival of the British in the 19th century that more was known about the country’s interior. The “scramble” for Somalia, the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, was a three-part competition between Britain, France and Italy, initiating struggles that still have repercussions today. More of Somalia’s history is available in Britannica’s entry on Somalia.

The former Italian colony and British protectorate that made up the country finally merged in 1960, after centuries of tensions with Ethiopia and religious rebellions from Somali natives. The BBC’s “Country Profile” of Somalia explains that the country has functioned under “lawlessness” since 1991.

The lack of a strong, consistent government in Somalia has led to the displacement of up to at least half a million Somalis, according to data from the International Displacement Monitoring Center (the UN estimates the number could be double). After an unsuccessful peacekeeping mission in Somalia from 1993 to 1995, the population of Somalia became fractured, according to the IDMC. A transitional government led by President Abdullahi Yussuf Ahmad was established in 2004 with the help of the UN, but failed to make much progress. Soon after, the Union of Islamic Courts entered the country in June 2006, and occupied the capital of Mogadishu, displacing thousands from the city. The group was overtaken by Ethiopian-supported government forces, who were attacked repeatedly by insurgents in 2006 and 2007. Violence peaked in the spring of 2007.

Since then, the government has continued to clash with opposition groups, chiefly the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia. An apparent breakthrough occurred on June 9, when the two groups met and agreed to “end all acts of confrontation” within 30 days and remove Ethiopian troops within four months. The talks came after encouragement from the UN Security Council, who visited with leaders of both groups earlier in June. On July 7, Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said that UN troops are needed immediately as a stabilizing force in preparation for the Ethiopian troops’ departure. The region has yet to see measurable benefits from the June 9 agreement.

Alex Thurston, an American who blogs for The Agonist, contends that U.S. coverage of the peace talks did not thoroughly describe the situation in Somalia. The BBC, Al-Jazeera and The New York Times all covered the story of the recent peace talks, Thurston says, but only the BBC and Al-Jazeera reported that the leader of the Union of Islamic Courts did not agree to the talk’s terms. (However, the International Herald Tribune, The Times’s sister newspaper, did carry an AP article about the refusal.) He believes that a more balanced and “informed public discussion” about the crisis is necessary if the United States is to provide effective assistance.

Somalia happens to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, and access is limited to foreigners, meaning its own natives are the journalists most at risk. BBC reporter Celeste Hicks mourns her colleague Nasteh Dahir, a Somali journalist who worked for the BBC and Associated Press and was killed in early June, and notes, “Essentially off-limits to foreign journalists, the task of making sense of this country which seems to exist beyond chaos is left to the handful of young, dedicated Somalis.” But unfortunately, the Somali reporter is always at risk of becoming yet another “name on a list of brutal murders.”

A list of Somalia’s leaders sheds light on the country’s volatility in recent years. The Spain-based CIDOB Foundation lists current and past leaders of Somalia, including each leader’s party or group affiliations and their term dates (which are often quite short).